by Christi Snow
So, no...no apologies here. Just one great big, thank fuck!
Now, if he could just make sure Luke wouldn’t overreact about what happened, it would be great. “Admit it. There are worse ways to start the day,” Daniel said.
Luke blew out a breath, glanced over at the sleeping Austin, and then let a wide smile spread across his face. “True, but that won’t be the case if we have to clean dried cum out of our pubes all day. We need to get cleaned up. All three of us.”
“Do you want to wake sleeping beauty or should I do it?”
Luke raised a challenging eyebrow and then an unhappy frown furrowed between his brows and his lips pressed tightly together. “You’re the one with the history with him, so I’ll let you handle it.”
Daniel tilted his head at Luke. That statement had sounded a little...weird and maybe...
No.
Could Luke be jealous?
“While you’re doing that, I’ll go dampen some washcloths,” Luke said, suddenly not meeting Daniel’s searching gaze before he bounded out of the bed, and left the room, leaving Daniel reeling.
“He loves you,” Austin said, his voice low.
Daniel’s gaze shot to Austin. “I thought you were asleep.”
“And I thought I woke up in heaven, so we’re both a little misguided.” Austin sat up higher against the headboard, winced, and then grimaced in distaste as he peeked under the covers. “I didn’t dream all that—the three of us this morning—did I?”
“Nope.” Daniel popped the p. “You got us all started with a very pleasant bang this morning. Literally.” Daniel lowered his voice. “But beyond that, how are you feeling?”
Austin blinked a few times and gingerly lifted his hand to the bruise on his temple that sure didn’t look any happier today than it had the night before. The colors were darker and even more colorful, but the swelling appeared to have gone down overnight.
“Sore,” Austin answered. “A bit foggy on the details, but I guess I’m lucky to be alive, so I’ll take sore.” He shrugged and then gently prodded the livid bruise that angled across his torso from his seatbelt. “Along with a bit of embarrassment for riling everyone up this morning. That wasn’t my intention.”
Austin grimaced as he shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
Daniel frowned at him. “What was your intention, because I think there’s a lot more going on in that head of yours than Luke or I know of? Why did you abandon him with me?”
Before Austin could answer, the man in question came into the room carrying a handful of washcloths and towels. He stumbled to a halt when he saw that Austin was awake. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Austin gave him a chagrined frown. “Good enough to molest you in your sleep, so I think I’ll survive.” Austin winced and started to climb out from under the covers. “Sorry about that,” he said as he stood, but then he swayed.
Daniel dove across the bed, but without his prostheses on, he couldn’t get to Austin fast enough.
Luke dropped the linens he was carrying and lunged to catch Austin before he hit the floor. Luke caught him and both of them heaved a sigh of relief as Luke gently lowered Austin to the edge of the bed.
“How about you stay right there until we’re sure you’re really okay?” Luke squatted in front of Austin and looked him in the eyes. “Tell me what’s going on? Are you just dizzy or is it something more?”
Luke’s eyes traveled down Austin’s naked body, examining him methodically.
Daniel did the same inspection, but he wasn’t able to pretend disinterest. Even hurt and just out of bed, Austin had a gorgeous body.
Daniel’s groin heated at the sight, even if he’d just orgasmed. When his libido came back, it came back full force.
Austin cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just stood up too fast. I wasn’t thinking with you...” His voice trailed off as he waved a hand at Luke’s impressive almost-naked form.
Yeah, Daniel could relate to that. He got stupid when he saw Luke almost naked, too.
Although, interestingly, he was having almost the same reaction to Austin.
For years, the only man who could turn him on by simply being in the room was Luke, but now he discovered that Austin had that same effect on him. It made no sense.
Not that either man was for him anymore. He glanced down at his disfigured legs and panicked. When he dove to help Austin, he’d accidentally uncovered them. It was bad enough that he’d been sitting there with his stumps under the covers, but now disgust swamped him. No one wanted to see the extent of the damage done to his legs. He yanked up the covers and covered himself. He had to hide them before either man saw.
“Don’t do that,” Luke growled.
Daniel looked up and met both Luke and Austin’s gazes focused on him. Luke looked angry. Austin’s expression was more concerned.
Daniel shook his head and shrugged like it was no big deal, even while his stomach sank and rolled with nausea. “No one needs to see them. I don’t even like to look at them.” But he didn’t have any choice. He was stuck with seeing them every day. An everyday reminder that he wasn’t the same now. He was broken and always would be.
Handicapped.
Fuck, he hated that word.
But that was his reality now. The world had to make allowances for him because he couldn’t navigate through society just like everyone else. Everyone else who was whole.
He’d never appreciated being whole.
“Your scars don’t bother me,” Austin said softly.
Daniel chuckled bitterly. “That’s easy to say, but everyone gets that squirrelly feeling in their stomach when they look at what’s left of my legs. Hell, I even still do it. It’s natural and uncomfortable. Looking at my body now makes a lot of people feel physically ill.” It was an awful truth, but a truth nonetheless. He knew it. So did everyone else. They just wanted to pretend that it wasn’t like that to preserve his feelings. Well, fuck that. “So, no, I won’t be showing off my scars. Thank you very much for offering to face them, though.”
“So, what?” Luke asked looking ferocious. His movements were jerky as he went to his suitcase in the corner and grabbed a couple pair of sweatpants. He threw one pair to Austin and slid the other pair angrily up his legs. “You’re just going to become a recluse and never let anyone see your body again? That’s no way to live. How can you not believe how sexy you still are? You might as well give the fuck up right now. If you weren’t going to fight, why did you even live? This is why your family is hovering. They love you. You aren’t living anymore and that terrifies them. You aren’t this person, Daniel. You aren’t this big of a coward.”
Daniel wanted to focus on Austin covering up all that delectable skin, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything but the attack Luke had just lobbed at him. It felt better to be angry over being pathetic.
“Fuck you, Luke. No one asked you. I don’t need your approval for how I live my life.” God. His throat was so tight it was tough to breathe, to get the words out of his chest. If he had any way to get out of here without them both having to watch him put on his prostheses, he’d be gone. But he refused to go through that humiliation, so he was stuck here until the two men left the bedroom. He needed them to do that. Now.
“That’s just it, D,” Luke whispered. “As it is now, you aren’t living. When was the last time you played an instrument? When was the last time you went on a date? Hell, when was the last time you hooked up with someone? This morning—as good as it was—doesn’t count.” Luke glanced over at the instruments in the corner.
Daniel could see Luke’s throat and jaw work as he swallowed and gritted his teeth. Daniel had watched him enough over the years to know when he was mulling something over.
Suddenly, he nodded and turned back toward them. “We’re stuck here for the time being.”
Luke stilled for a moment and focused on Austin. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten that we still need to discuss exactly w
hy that is, but for now, it’s reality.” His gaze shifted back to Daniel. “Let’s make use of this time. I can’t make any promises, but I think I can guarantee one thing.” He waved a hand between himself and Austin. “You have two men here in this cabin who think you’re sexy as fuck. Use us to get your confidence back. Let us show you how good things can be. Show us your scars and let us show you they don’t have to change your life.”
Was he proposing what Daniel thought he was? “Why now?” Daniel whispered, afraid of the answer, but he needed to know the truth. He couldn’t go into this if it was just a pity fuck. God that would kill him.
“Well, I can only speak for myself,” Luke said, even more annoyed than before. “But goddammit, I care about you, you idiot.” Then he stormed out of the room.
After the door slammed shut behind him, Austin gave Daniel a wide, toothy grin. “I told you he loved you.”
Daniel’s heart leapt in his chest with hope.
“You’re just too close to the matter to see it but that’s a man,” Austin pointed toward the door where Luke had stormed out, “who’s fighting for the man he loves. You. He’s fighting you for you because he cares so much about you.”
Daniel wanted so much to believe that, but he had years experience of Luke turning him down that said something totally different.
In fact, it was more likely that Luke was doing this as some sort of favor for Brady. It would totally be like Luke to do this just to make Brady happy. Brady might be Luke’s employer, but their friendship ran deep and Daniel knew that Luke would give up his life for Brady in a heartbeat. Asking him to fuck Brady’s pathetic loser cousin wouldn’t be that much of a hardship comparatively.
Fuck, he didn’t even want to think like that. “What about you?” he asked Austin. “How do you fit into all this?”
“I was never supposed to be here. This cabin, this bed, this setup was supposed to allow you and Luke to finally connect the way you were meant to.”
Daniel’s heart had been frantically trying to beat out of his chest all morning, but it leapt with hope now. “How can you be so sure about that? You don’t even know us, and you’ve never seen his reality...” Daniel swallowed the grief over years of Luke rejecting him. “You’ve never seen how much he doesn’t want me.”
Austin shook his head and winced. He lifted a hand to the bruise on his temple. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Austin spoke quietly, but conviction filled his voice. He waved a hand toward the doorway Luke had stomped through. “That man wants you more than life itself. I’ve seen it...in both of you. You owe it to one another to try.”
Daniel reached up and brushed Austin’s hand to the side, gently caressing the tender skin around his bruise. How could one man have such a big heart and hide it so well? “You’ve done all this for me, but if I pursue this with Luke, where does that leave you? Because, Austin, there were three of us in this bed this morning and that seemed like a good thing.” Ever since he’d met Austin, his heart had been torn between the two men. Could the three of them together work? It had this morning. “I think for now, there are three of us here in this...whatever it is.”
Austin leaned over and gently kissed Daniel on the lips, a soft exploration that left prickles of awareness zinging under Daniel’s skin and shooting straight toward his groin. And it left him more confused than ever. How could he be drawn to two men this strongly at the same time?
“Honestly, my night with you was the single hottest night of my life,” Austin said. “I’m not stupid enough to pass on having a repeat. I wasn’t supposed to be here for any of this, and it’s so stupid of me to think about continuing.” Austin swallowed hard as he grabbed hold of Daniel’s hand. “But I don’t think I’m strong enough to walk away. Count me in. Just watching the two of you fight has my dick hard. I can’t wait to see what happens when you’re making love. And for the record, he’s right. You’re still sexy as fuck and I for one am looking forward to you owning my ass again.”
Austin winked and then slowly stood, making sure he didn’t stumble this time. “I’ll leave you to your privacy but think about it. I for one am really hoping you’ll take him up on his offer.”
Then Austin slowly shuffled out of the room. Daniel watched him closely the whole way. He moved like everything hurt, and it probably still did. But fuck, Austin could even make hurt look sexy. The man had been through a major ordeal the night before after having a wreck and then his frigid hike up to the cabin.
It boggled Daniel’s mind that Austin could even think about sex after all that. And that had Daniel’s erection throbbing.
He threw off the covers and studied the lower half of his body. Both his legs ended right above where his knees should have been. He found out after the fact that he’d only lost that much of one leg. The other one had been sheered off just above his ankle by the torn metal of the fuselage when the plane ripped in half, but they’d had to even his legs out so that his prostheses wouldn’t put more stress on one stump over the other. So, now they were both amputated above the knee.
He glanced over at the door. He wouldn’t put it past Luke to come barging back in here, so he needed to get his equipment on before that happened. Then he could sort through where he was at mentally.
Despite everything else in his brain telling him this was a stupid idea, his body was fully on board with this idea. He grimaced down at his hard cock. But he had to be smart about this, or else he might not survive the fallout.
Chapter Twelve
LUKE
Luke glanced up as Austin came out of the bedroom. He moved slowly, but he was moving. Last night the idea that he’d be doing that much today had been up for debate.
Luke lifted his coffee cup in greeting. “I found a french press and made some coffee by boiling water over the fireplace. Are you interested?”
“God, yes. I don’t know if it will help this headache, but it sure as hell can’t hurt any.” Austin stilled for a moment and frowned around the room before going over to the wall and flipping the light switch. “Why don’t you all have the generator going?”
Luke froze for a moment. “There’s a generator?”
“Of course. We’re ten thousand feet up in the Rocky Mountains. The power goes out up here all the time. From what I remember, it’s in the shed in the crawlspace below the house.”
“Well, fuck. It would have been nice to know that twelve hours ago.” Luke began jerking on his coat over his naked chest and boots over his bare feet. He shook his head at Austin, anger and frustration brewing in a powerful mix just under his skin.
The man was sexy as fuck, but this power trip that he had going thinking he could just manipulate Daniel and him into falling in love could have been dangerous.
“What exactly was your plan by trapping us here? That was the plan, right? Since you took off like a bat out of hell. Then almost immediately, we lost any way to phone out for help. Don’t you realize how dangerous that could have been? Hell, you could have died because of it. If your head injury had been worse, we wouldn’t have been able to get help for you in time.”
Austin ran a hand through his hair and encountered the dried blood still stuck in it and grimaced as he examined his hand.
Fuck. Luke could have at least let the man get showered and feeling somewhat more alive before attacking him. His frustration with Daniel had him on edge. Add to that the fact that all three of them had jacked off together in bed and he was feeling more than a little discombobulated about where they stood now.
He didn’t even know Austin. Fuck, Austin was paying him, and that was before he got into the years of messed up history between Daniel and himself.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought that would be the way they’d start the day.
Austin sank into the large padded leather barstool on the other side of the breakfast counter and rested his forehead in his hand. “I thought I was doing a good deed. I met Daniel shortly before the plane crash and he...” Austin flicked a wary glance
up at Luke. “He mentioned you.”
That was an interesting pause and look. It made Luke wonder exactly what had been happening when Daniel mentioned him.
“He cares a great deal about you,” Austin said quietly. “Then, I was there the day of the plane crash...at the hospital in the waiting room with Emily. I saw you and put two and two together about who you were to Daniel.”
Luke stilled. He didn’t remember seeing Austin there. In fact, if asked, he wouldn’t have said he’d ever met Austin until he hired him for this job. Wow, to miss someone with a presence like Austin’s meant he’d been really out of it. Observing everything around him was one thing that made him so good at his job.
But he’d been waiting to hear if Daniel were alive or dead, so he’d had a few other things on his mind.
“I don’t remember you,” Luke said.
Austin chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. I’d have been more surprised if you had remembered me being there. If you had, I never would have been able to pull this off. But anyone who’d been paying attention that day could have seen how devastated you were. In fact, I’m sure most of them saw it, but assumed your concerns were focused on Brady not Daniel. I suspected otherwise.”
“I was worried about both of them.” But no, his devastation had been because of Daniel. “What made you so sure it was the other way around?”
“Simple.” Austin flashed him a wry grin. “I’d met Daniel. I knew firsthand what an enigmatic man he was. No one could resist developing feelings for him when he cared as deeply about you as he did. And that day in the hospital, I didn’t see a man brokenhearted about his friend. I saw a man shattered by the idea of losing the love of his life.”
For a moment, Luke was stunned silent, but then the bedroom door opened and Daniel stepped into the room. He’d managed a shower as his hair was still wet. He wore jeans and a thick Colorado sweatshirt, but he’d never looked more beautiful than he did in this moment.
